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Injuries, starvation and stroke: This is what happened to the person who lived in isolation for 40 years
In a new documentary, 74-year-old Ken Smith recounts his controversial decision to leave civilization and live alone in the woods for nearly 40 years.
Although he has had a stroke recently, he does not intend to return to us: "I will stay here in the forest until my death"
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Insulation
Civilization
Scotland
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Tuesday, 16 November 2021, 23:44
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There is something very tempting about life on a lonely island, away from civilization and all the daily troubles we have to deal with. On the other hand, we are not able to put our smartphone aside for an hour, so live without any means of communication for the rest of our lives? There is no way we will survive this. Ken Smith, on the other hand, survived it beautifully (relatively). For almost 40 years he lived in isolation, cut off from the world, and survived hunger, injuries and even a stroke - and still refuses to return to live with us. We were a little offended, thank you.
Ken Smith, originally from Derbyshire, England, completely renounced conventional life and lived without electricity or water in a hand-built wooden hut on the banks of a remote loch in the Scottish Highlands, a historic mountainous area in the north west of Scotland. Smith, 74, also known as "The Monk from Trig," lives a two-hour walk from the nearest road. In a BBC Scotland documentary, The Hermit of Treig, Smith recounts that at the age of 15 he began working in the construction of fire stations and how his life changed when at the age of 26 he was severely beaten by a gang of thugs after a night out. Smith suffered a brain injury Who put him into a coma for 23 days. He recalls: "They said I would never recover. They said I would never speak again. They said I would never go again - but I did. "This is the moment when I decided that I would never live on anyone's terms other than my own," he told the BBC.
After recovering, Smith traveled to a remote area of Canada bordering Alaska called the Yukon, where he spent months hiking in the desert for about 35,000 miles before returning home.
Unfortunately, upon his return, Smith discovered that both his parents had passed away.
"It took me a long time to figure out the size of the thing. I felt nothing," he said.
Their death encouraged him to go on a trip along the UK during which he tried to deal with his sadness: "I cried all the way while walking. I thought to myself, where is the most isolated place in the UK? ... hundreds and hundreds of miles of nothing."
He finally reached the Scottish Highlands, where he was revealed: "I looked beyond Loch and saw this forest. That was the point where I stopped crying. There I also finished my constant wandering."
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Smith chose to build his own wooden house in the remote location of Loch Treig in the mid-1980s, where he has lived ever since.
It uses firewood for heating and block to supply food and water.
The place has a burning fire but no electricity, gas or running water - certainly no absorption.
He grows vegetables and gathers berries, but his main source of food comes from far and wide.
"If you want to live an independent life, you have to learn to fish," he says, "it's a good life. Everyone would want to live like this but no one does it."
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Smith had little interaction with the outside world, but recently received a visit from docu-filmmaker Lizzie Mackenzie, who contacted him nine years ago and over the past two years has filmed him for a documentary aired last week on BBC Scottland.
This is how he lives on the island
Not long after the camera crew left, in February 2019, Smith suffered a stroke and was forced to evacuate by helicopter to Fort William Hospital, thanks to a distress signal he sent on a GPS he had received a few days earlier from the camera crew.
A distress alert was sent to the UK Coast Guard and Smith was soon rushed to hospital, where he stayed for seven weeks until his recovery.
His doctors tried to persuade him to return to civilization, but he decided to return to the forest.
In view of his health condition, the park rangers were asked to visit him every two weeks to make sure he was okay and provide him with food, for which he pays from his pension money.
A year later, Smith was flown back to the hospital for treatment after a pile of logs collapsed on him.
Despite the recent disasters that befell him, Smith is optimistic about his future: "We were not put on earth to live forever. I will be here until my last days come, definitely. I had a lot of incidents but I seem to have survived them all. I will probably be fine again sometime. "Something will happen to me that will kill me one day like everyone else, but I will stay here in the forest until my death. I hope to reach the age of 102."
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